PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 433 



own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he 

 finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called 

 upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, 

 and to tell us what he can see from his vantage-ground; 

 if, at such a moment, after straining his gaze to the very 

 verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant 

 of well- denned objects, he should give utterance also to 

 some of the subjective impressions which he is conscious 

 of receiving from regions beyond; if he should depict 

 possibilities which seem opening to his view; if he should 

 explain why he thinks this a mere blind alley and that an 

 open path; then the fault and the loss would be alike ours 

 if we refused to listen calmly, and temperately to form our 

 own judgment on what we hear; then assuredly it is we who 

 would be committing the error of confounding matters of fact 

 with matters of opinion, if we failed to discriminate between 

 the various elements contained in such a discourse, and as- 

 sumed that they had been all put on the same footing. ' ' 



While largely agreeing with him I cannot quite accept 

 the setting in which Professor Virchow places the con- 

 fessedly abortive attempts to secure an experimental basis 

 for the doctrine of spontaneous generation. It is not a 

 doctrine "so discredited" that some of the scientific think- 

 ers of England accept "as the basis of all their views of 

 life." Their induction is by no means thus limited. They 

 have on their side more than the "reasonable probability' 1 

 deemed sufficient by Bishop Butler for practical guidance 

 in the gravest affairs, that the members of the solar system 

 which are now discrete once formed a continuous mass; 

 that in the course of untold ages, during which the work 



of condensation, through the waste of heat in space, went 



SCIENCE 19 



